December 28, 2018

Fake Patent News claims that a new Apple patent hints of the return of Apple's MagSafe Connector

Everyone hates the noise of nails scratching a chalkboard as much as I hate utter fake patent news. Yesterday AppleWorld.Today posted a report titled "Another Apple patent filing hints at the return of the MagSafe connector." The report's explanation of a hint of MagSafe's return is simply repeating what the original patent filing stated back in 2015 and repeated again in 2017 and again when Apple was granted a patent for this in June 2018. So where's the hint of it's return in any of these patents? Nowhere to be found.

Yesterday's patent filing was a "continuation" patent, not a new patent filing. In continuation patents, all that changes in one way or another is presented in its patent claims, period. What Apple did yesterday was change their patent claims from their original granted patent to be in sync with the claims found in their "magnetic adapter" patent filing of 2017 found here.

That's what yesterday's patent application was all about without a hint of anything in respect to its return to market. It was solely a technical change, not a feature change or addition.

AppleWorld.Today continually misinforms the Apple community about continuation patents with blind ignorance month after month. That's why I'm posting this report. Not because a fellow Apple site or writer made an error as we all make errors. It's because this site continually misrepresents Apple's continuation patents as new Apple patents or misrepresents what Apple's "continuation" actually spells out.

Sometimes there is a nice addition that Apple has added to their continuation patent worth highlighting. But most of the time, changes in their patent claims are dry, boring and not worth reporting on. Yesterday's patent was such a classic case.

At the end of the day there was no hint of MagSafe's return found in yesterday's continuation patent. No material aspect of the invention changed to give us a hint of something new in the works.

Of course that doesn't mean that Apple hasn't thought of reinventing MagSafe in the future because a real patent that they have on record actually presents a new concept that isn't an esoteric 'hint" of a new idea.

Patently Apple covered that patent application back in 2015 about a stackable MagSafe concept with a few of Apple's patent figures presented below.

Back in 2016 Apple sued Mobile Starr for selling unauthorized MagSafe products with Apple's logo printed on the packaging. Apple has also been sued by State Farm in 2017 based on the Apple "charger" being faulty. The problems with overheating with counterfeit MagSafe products or MagSafe being the suspected cause behind fires could have been one of the motivators behind Apple's decision to stop supporting MagSafe.

Apple was granted a patent in March 2018 for an updated form of MagSafe that Apple's patent identified as "Robust Magnetic Connector." Whether the robust magnetic connector is ever adopted or MagSafe returning to market is still in the air. But for now, there was certainly no hint of MagSafe returning to market based on yesterday's published continuation patent filing.